Q1b Key Concepts

Audience

Audience – Who are they?

Mass/Niche?

Demographics – gender, age, nationality, income, etc.

Values, attitudes, lifestyles?

Audience – different theoretical approaches

Effects Theory - Passive Audience

Reception Theory – Active Audience

Media Effects

theories assume

the audience to

be passive in the

receiving and

interpretation of

media texts.

Useful reference:

http://www.aber.ac.uk/me

dia/Students/pph9701.html

One Media Effects theory

Reception theories

assume the

audience to be

active in the process

of making meaning

from a media text.

Taken from Haynes (2000): http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/pph9701.html

‘The meaning is not in

the text, but in the

reading.’

(Andrew Hart, 1991)

Texts need audiences in order to realise their potential for meaning. So a text does not have a single meaning but rather a range of possibilities which are defined by both the text and by its audiences.

Audience – Reception Theory

So, Reception theory is audience centred thinking about a media text.

It focuses on what an audience does with a media text.

Stuart Hall’s work on the Encoding-Decoding Model is most prominent in this field.

Stuart Hall’s Encoding-Decoding Model

Stuart Hall’s Encoding-Decoding Model

The Encoding-Decoding Model explores the relationship between media text and audience:

producers encode a media text with an intended meaning

audiences decode a media text and interpret its content in different ways, taking meanings from it that may or may not be in line with the intended meaning.

Watch this 3 minute clip for an overview: http://youtu.be/LG1fAMiLv18

Hall stated that audiences (depending on their own knowledge, experience, values, attitudes and beliefs) may respond differently to the same media text and suggested that they can take the following readings:

Preferred reading

Negotiated reading

Oppositional reading

Stuart Hall’s Encoding-Decoding Model

Stuart Hall – Preferred Reading

Some people may take a preferred reading and look at the representations as 'how it is' and/or something to emulate. They would not question the representations.

Stuart Hall argues that this is the reading that the producers intend audiences to take.

Stuart Hall – negotiated reading

Some people may take a negotiated reading

For example, they may recognise that a blockbuster film is made for commercial gain and offers a glamorous Hollywood version of the World and so does not accept the representations as reality, but perhaps still buys into them as unattainable cultural ideals that are pleasurable to consume for entertainment.

Or, they may not associate the representations in the media text with their own attitudes and interests but could accept the representations as the dominant social view and go along to watch it anyway, especially if friends want to see it.

Stuart Hall – oppositional reading

Some people may take an oppositional reading and completely reject the representations as they do not agree with the values they see embedded in the text.

For example, a feminist may reject a media text where women are represented only as sexual objects and no longer engage with it. The ideological perspective of the text and the ideological perspective of the audience are in conflict.

What different interpretations and readings do you think this TV Drama trailer might have got? Consider different audiences:

Skins Trailer

Apply to your productionQ: What is the intended/preferred meaning of your production?

Q: Which audience is most likely to take a preferred reading and why?

To help you answer this, consider how media language is used to ‘speak’ to a particular audience, how different audiences might respond to signifiers of genre and narrative, and also, how audiences might respond to how characters, places or subjects are represented.

Q: Who might take a negotiated reading of your production and why?

Q: Who might take an oppositional reading of your production and why?

In conclusion, how successful do you think your production is in enticing your target audience to want to watch the film?